Welcome to my DEFCON overview. This is the first time I've tried anything
like this, but I thought I'd take a hand at really giving a feeling for
one of these events, because I've met too many people who think they know
what they're about, and have never been to one.

The big problem with a lot of DEFCON wrap-ups, I think, is that they don't
start early enough. When you're attending something as large and
potentially encompassing as DEFCON, you want to mention or at least
discuss what your feelings were before, during and after the con. The
flaw in focusing just on during the con is that unless you completely geek
out and go anti-social, you don't really have time to write about the
events you're witnessing during that time.

So instead, let me talk a little starting today. It's July 24th, just
before midnight. DEFCON is in 4 days, and I will be leaving on a plane on
the evening of the 27th. I'm writing this from my home in Belmont,
Massachusetts, about 4 miles away from Boston.

I've had a lot of names online over the years, but right now most people
know me as simply Jason Scott, owner of TEXTFILES.COM and maybe SketchCow
on EFnet. If you also know me as Sketch The Art Cow of TinyTIM, well now
we're getting somewhere, and if you know me as The Slipped Disk, then we
need to talk.

Last year was my first DEFCON, and also the first time I've ever been a
speaker. I decided to be a speaker for two reasons: It gave me a chance to
talk about my web site, which I knew would be of interest to at least a
few people, and it got me in for free, instead of paying the $50 admission
fee, which my any measurement is a lot to attend a convention. My talk
went off wonderfully, and I got a lot of compliments and comments about
it, so I was inspired to do it again.

Even though I've been in the BBS and Hacker "scenes" for many, many years,
I'd always shunned this post-1990 cons because they made me nervous. I was
one of the people who saw how kids even at tiny 2600 meetings were
harassed, photographed, and generally singled out as targets, and these
cons seemed to me to be just asking for trouble. This was a lot of my
paranoid phase, which I have never outgrown but I've at least come to
terms with it. I also don't drink or do drugs, which limits out a large
amount of the usual activities at the cons that take place in hotels in
middle america or the coasts. Just what I need; another large party where
the amount of alcohol that's being drunk defines how good the con is
going. Not for me.

DEFCON, however, is held in Las Vegas, and I have a love affair with that
city. Any amount of concentrated study will reveal that the vast majority
of casinos and hotels are controlled by a small cachet of folks who impose
a bit of uniformity and aim-for-the-breadbasket "safety" across all the
venues, but there's something else in the air. I almost call it a kind of
freedom, although the word gets bandied about too much. Perhaps we should
call it ... a catered extreme. There's a feeling you get in Vegas that you
can't stay out too late, you can't overspend, you can't have too much fun,
you can't easily shock and dismay. Yes, you can be a jerk and you can
get yourself arrested or thrown out of places, but this is the exception,
not the rule. Vegas can almost always take anything you try and give
it. Everything's 24 hours, too, which completely remodels the entire way
you live. During the last con, my sister came along, and I'd stumble into
the shared room at the hotel and she'd go "Time for the tables!" and the
next thing I'd know I'd be jammed in with 5 people going to Circus
Circus at 3am. And by the time I stumbled back into the room, it'd be
time for DEFCON again...

Let's talk a little about this year. Due to several interesting
occurences, this year is going to be out of control for me, personally. A
bunch of things have come together to really promise I won't forget this
DEFCON, or this weekend. Here's the ingredients:

I'm getting married in Vegas next June. We're really into this idea
but the planning is already underfoot and so when I go I've got an
eye towards this place and that place I see as possible reception
or bachelor party locations. It adds an interesting color.

I'm speaking again. The title of my talk is "TEXTFILES.COM: ONE YEAR
LATER", and will be primarily about running my site, the interesting
fights I've had, and some pieces of history about the BBS I used to
run. I only have a nebulous idea of all I'm writing about. I better
get cracking!

It turned out the flight from Boston to Vegas and back ($236) was so
cheap, my friend Jim (Snuh, I call him) couldn't pass it up. Then our
mutual friends Morgan (Pheesh) and Jim #2 (Jaded) convinced their
jobs to pay for a trip. My friend Jason (Chuckles) had recently moved
to L.A. and has indicated that he's interested in using this as an
excuse to ride around in his nice new car he bought, so he's driving
down. And my old, old friend Matt (Iskra) gave me such a good turn at
the H2K conference that he's staying with us as a thank-you. Oh, and
Jaded, Pheesh, and Snuh are all riding on the same flight as me. We're
all going to stay in a couple rooms at the Candlewood, which was the
only nearby open hotel we could choose from when we started all looking
for a place to stay.

My fiancee' looked at the price and SHE wouldn't pass it up. So she's
coming. Now, this would normally break a little-known rule of DEFCON,
which is "Don't bring significant others who are not interested in
Hacker Culture to DEFCON", but in fact she's staying in a complete
other hotel, and her Mom (who is one happening lady) will be staying
with her, and the two of them are going to go do Wedding planning and
research. I might see a bit of her, and she's riding on the plane with
the rest of us, but we're mostly not going to be in the same place
for the event. But it'll add a flavor, and I'm sure I'll be roped
into at least a dinner at some point.

By sheer absolute coincidence, the Classic Gaming Expo is being held in
Vegas on the same weekend as DEFCON. This Expo is where all the big
folks from the 70's/80's era of 8-bit gaming (Think Atari 2600,
Colecovision, Intellivision, etc.) get together and have cool show
stuff and generally do their thing. So we're going to make a major
effort to show to that.

This could either be absolutely incredible, or a major disaster, but
either way, like I said, unforgettable.

Tomorrow, my preparations.

July 25th, 2000

A day later, I've got a better idea of what my speech is going to be
structured as. It's now a matter of printing out all the relevant
law information and finding copies of some of those whopper e-mails
I'd gotten for the past year. And did I get some! The key is not to
turn the speech into me reading from a piece of paper. I like the
vibrancy of speaking in front of people.

When I look at the videotape of my previous DEFCON speech, I'm most
struck by how much I seemed to be stumbling around, looking for
the right words when in fact I was trying to keep myself on the
track of the written words on my speech paper I had in front of
me. That said, people still told me it was enjoyable, but I hope that
this time I'm a much clearer speaker.

One year at high school, I ran for class and then school president.
It was a joke ticket all the way, but what I think was most important
was that I learned the hard way that no preparation can kill you up
there in front of an audience, especially an audience forced to be
there like they were on election day. My first speech was off the cuff
working from a list of ideas I'd written down. That worked. The
second speech had no preparation and I still thought I could wing
it. I got out 4 or 5 good sentences and stumbled badly. The feeling
I had then, I don't want again.

Packing? Don't get me started. The basics are there, with the socks
and the boxers and the initial pairs of pants, but I want to be
able to be dressed for a whole range of events, such as DEFCON itself,
speaking at DEFCON, hanging with the cDc (lots of cow stuff for that),
going out to the Casino, and of course my Airplane Lounge Pants from
Hell, because the trip is 5 hours and really boring. That brings
up books, and getting out the right fun toys to bring without going
overboard... man, I better pack well tomorrow night after work!

I also quit today, officially. I knew I was going to be ending my
job sometime soon, but today was the day I actually submitted my
resignation. I end my job on August 9th, so I'll still have to
stumble back from DEFCON and back into work. Oh, well. This also
means I've been spending no small amount of time at work making
final DEFCON arrangements, so that at least works in my favor.

We think we've zeroed in on the good place to have a wedding:
Mandalay Bay, at the north end of the strip. They've got a kick-ass
chapel which we can bring our own Clergy into, a great set of
rooms, a fair price, and room for our (large) wedding party.
I'm excited about that. It also means that Nicole can do some
more definite research with the place and know what she wants to
get out of it. Mandalay Bay also has great restaurants, great
locations, the whole deal. Looks like she knows what SHE's doing!

Snuh tells me he's packing, and getting there, and bought some
new clothes for the trip. Pheesh and Jaded haven't checked in,
although I had Snuh forward them the Defcon list of things to think
about bringing. It's not a perfect list, but it gets the mind
going.

Hey, I think I figured out what my reading material will be: I
promised M0gel I was going to write the kick-assingest report on
the entire run of Hogs of Entropy (HOE) for the last issue of
that zine. I want it to be huge, a great work with some real
historical views of the work. To do this, I need to read them all,
all 1000+. Gotta do SOMETHING on the plane! Man, isn't work going
to be surprised when I print all these things.

Packing, Packing. I know I should be more excited than I am, but
there's so much to think about, work and home and getting ready,
that I haven't had time to really let it sink in that I'm going
back to Vegas. I can't believe that for some people Vegas is a
chore. How could you not love that place? It's beyond me.

And now, sleep. It's just going to get more hectic.

July 26th, 2000

Hey, it happened. The excitement is here. Less than a day before
I'm on a plane to Las Vegas and the Defcon/Classic Gaming Expo
experience, and I'm all jumpy and excited. I specifically noted
buying some supplies at my local supermarket and not being able
to stand still, thinking of all that I have to do and where I'm
going to find the time.

Work was mostly a blow-off, because I had to spend a lot of time
creating the TEXTFILES.COM CD-ROM I'm giving away. It'd be too easy
to just slap together the files into a tar archive and burn it.
I made sure there wasn't extraneous data clogging up the archive
and had to write a couple support files to explain what it is and
how to use it. Hopefully my work will be worth it and by the end
of DEFCON there'll be lots of copies of my site in people's hands.
I hope their promise of a CD Burning station will come true. I'd
love to get my CDs out that way.

Another couple of things I did at work involved printouts. Lots
and lots of printouts. First, I made sure to print out relative
hate and fan mail letters from my mailbox to read out. And I
printed the first 75 files of Hogs of Entropy. Why? Because HOE
is about to have their final issue and I've agreed to write a
full retrospective of the files for Mogel. This will take a long
time, but I hope to have it done mid-august.

Now, being a veteran if not of cons then of travelling has taught
me that I WILL FORGET something I wish I had brought to the con.
This is the nature of things. There's not much you can do but be
methodical about it.

I've packed my Tuxedo, tons of shirts, shorts, pants, cow outfits,
and similar hoo-hah into my massive suitcase, which only makes
rare appearances since my fiancee' taught me to pack properly.
I hope Snuh and the rest are all getting their stuff together
as well. We're leaving tomorrow at 7pm! I can't wait!